Tableau Desktop and Web Authoring Help

Creators: Connect to data on the web

Before you can create a new workbook and build a view on the web to analyze your data on the web, you need to connect to your data. Tableau supports connecting to data sources on the web published through Tableau Desktop, or, connecting to data directly through Tableau Online or Tableau Server.

Note: Data connections created in Tableau Online or Tableau Server are live connections only. If you need to use an extract for web authoring, you can publish your data source through Tableau Desktop. To publish through Tableau Desktop, see Publish Data Sources and Workbooks.

To create a new workbook, sign into Tableau Online or Tableau Server.

From the Explore page, select Create > Workbook.

A Connect to Data window opens, which contains several tabs: Files, Connectors, On this Site, and, if you’re connected to Tableau Online, Dashboard Starters.

As a Creator, you can create a new workbook or add a new data source to an existing workbook in several ways:

Connect to Files

Tableau supports uploading Excel or text-based data sources (.xlsx, .csv, .tsv) directly in your browser. In the Files tab of the Connect to Data window, connect to an Excel or text file by dragging and dropping it into the field or clicking "Upload from computer."

When Tableau successfully connects to your data, the Data Source page opens so that you can prepare the data for analysis and begin building your view. To learn more, see Creators: Prepare Data on the Web.

Use connectors

From the Connectors tab, you can connect to data housed in a cloud database or on a server in your enterprise. You need to supply connection information for each data connection that you make. For example, for most data connections, you need to supply a server name and your sign-in information. Supported connectors for Tableau Online and Tableau Server are:

Tableau Online connectors:

Amazon Aurora

Amazon RedShift

Box

Denodo

Dropbox

Exasol

Google BigQuery

Google Cloud SQL

Google Drive

MemSQL

Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Microsoft SQL Server

OneDrive

Oracle

PostgreSQL

Snowflake

Tableau Data Server (single connections)

Vertica

Tableau Server connectors:

Actian Matrix*

Amazon Aurora

Amazon Redshift

Box

Denodo*

Dropbox

Exasol

Google BigQuery**

Google Cloud SQL

Google Drive

IBM BigInsights

IBM DB2

IBM PDA (Netezza)*

MariaDB

MarkLogic*

MemSQL

Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Microsoft SQL Server

MonetDB*

MySQL

OneDrive

Oracle

Pivotal Greenplum Database

PostgreSQL

SAP Sybase ASE*

SAP Sybase IQ*

Snowflake

Tableau Data Server (single connections)

Terradata Machine Learning Agent (Aster)*

Vertica

*Not available on Linux servers.

**Google BigQuery requires OAuth when creating data sources from the web. Learn more about how server administrators can Set up OAuth for Google.

Supported Connectors has information on how to connect Tableau to each of these connector types to set up your data source. If the connector you need doesn't appear in the Connectors tab, you can connect to data through Tableau Desktop and publish your data source to Tableau Online or Tableau Server for web authoring. Learn more about how to Publish a Data Source in Tableau Desktop.

When Tableau successfully connects to your data, the Data Source page opens so that you can prepare the data for analysis and begin building your view. To learn more, see Creators: Prepare Data on the Web.

Note: If you’re unable to connect to your data from Tableau Online, check to see if the database is publicly accessible. Tableau Online can only connect to data that's accessible from the public internet. If your data is behind a private network, you can connect using Tableau Bridge. To learn more, see Publishers: Use Tableau Bridge to Keep Tableau Online Data Fresh.

Connect to published data sources "On this Site"

Tableau supports connecting to published data saved to your site with the On this Site tab. If you or another user has saved a data source or published to the web through Tableau Desktop, it will appear in Tableau Online or Tableau Server as a published data source.

When Tableau successfully connects to your data, the Data Source page opens so that you can prepare the data for analysis and begin building your view. To learn more, see Creators: Prepare Data on the Web.

Dashboard Starters

Dashboard Starters help you quickly author and analyze data from cloud-based systems like Salesforce, ServiceNow ITSM, Oracle Eloqua, and Marketo. Simply create a new workbook and choose from several beautiful, informative designs that are tailor-made for key business metrics. For more information, see Dashboard Starters for Cloud-based Data Sources.

Keeping data fresh in web authoring

Update uploaded files in Tableau Online or Tableau Server: If you manually upload a file (Excel or text) for web authoring, Tableau can’t refresh the file automatically. To update your data, select “Edit Connection” to upload a new version of the file.

Update file-based published data sources in Tableau Online: If you have a published data source in Tableau Online (published through Tableau Desktop) that uses file-based data, you can keep it fresh using Tableau Bridge. For more information, see Expand Data Freshness Options by Using Tableau Bridge.